The constitution is contradictory. It isn't a perfect document written on a stone tablet by god.
And legal systems of any nation are more than just the constitution.
So the idea that you can just read one clause in the constitution and therefore clearly know what is allowed and isn't (also, even the interpretation of that clause is not as easy as you are portraying here) is absolutely false.
> And legal systems of any nation are more than just the constitution.
In any case when a legal system clashes with the wording of the constitution it is that legal system that is wrong. That's what "highest law in the land" means. That is the entire purpose of having a constitution.
Experts love to hide behind "it's complicated!" but in this case they have nowhere to hide.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Pull over a guy, take the paper cash out of his wallet without charging him with a crime. No amount of wordplay can make that constitutional in a reasonable persons mind.
I do think CAF as it's currently implemented is unconstitutional, but this clause doesn't make CAF as an idea unconstitutional. The entire point (originally) was to secure assets that you have probable cause to believe are funding or proceeds from crime. So you find someone with a trash bag full of pills and $300k in cash in their trunk after a legal search, you need a process to handle that money.
That process has existed since before America has, find probable cause someone is committing a crime, detain the suspect (you can get a warrant first but this is more common), get a warrant (can be done over the phone in a couple of minutes), put the cash away somewhere safe until the trial is over. If they are guilty of that crime and that cash was involved, great! If not you have to return it.
What we are talking about here is just taking the cash, sending you on your way and spending it, sidestepping your legal rights like access to a court provided attorney or a jury trial. It probably doesn't do much to prevent crime even, the fentanyl runners would much prefer you just take the cash they have on them and let them go.
But the way it works today is the "probable cause"is the fact the money is over 10k. No charges end up being filled, or they end up being dropped. But they don't give you the assets back. Even after proving they are legitimate. You still have to fight for it.
As an idea civil asset forfeiture is unconstitutional. Because it was designed to be an end around the constitution.
When interpretations of the meaning of the Constitution differ the one last held by the Supreme Court has the (current) final say. The constitution is by necessity an interpretive document because we don't have a Constitutional Oracle to perfectly map concepts and words for centuries back onto the technological landscape of today.
"Shall not be infringed" is a super common refrain among the 2A crowd but taken hyper literally you couldn't take guns away from criminals actively in prison.
I think civil forfeiture is far outside the bounds of what could be condoned under the Bill of Rights but my interpretation only matters at a distance of influencing representatives to pass laws or the SC to rule differently.
Libel law disagrees with the Constitution by a literal reading. So does banning human sacrifice in religious services. We still treat them as legitimate.
The same document talks about the "Blessings of Liberty" while establishing slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation?
It's a little hard to reconcile slavery with, say, the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
> slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation
You would've granted slave owners more votes? You feel they were under represented? If I lived in a state alone with a enough slaves I should have been able to dictate policy for the entire nation?
I think their concern was more the official endorsement of the practice of treating humans as private property, in contrast with a number of amendments providing individual rights (aforementioned property excluded).
I'd count them negatively personally but the grade school arugment made there has to die, the people who wrote that did so with the hopes of abolishing slavery in the future. It's exactly the opposite of how it is framed.
That's really rich coming from a proponent of federal authority/power.
The alternative here was the articles of confederation or nothing and the states go their own ways as countries, not some fantasy in which the southern states torpedoed their own economies out of some love of the nation.
The constitution and the included 3/5ths compromise most certainly brought about the end of slavery much faster than taking a hard line circa 1790, or anything else that tipped the scales away from the united states forming a national identity would have.
The original was contradictory, it was the result of a political compromise. The current version is not - not legally anyway. Three new amendments to the constitution made the earlier contradictions about slavery a dead letter of no legal effect.
That is what amendments do - they change things, and those ones came at no small price. So what is the point about complaining about a problem that six hundred thousand people already lost their lives in a successful attempt to resolve? Slavery has been illegal in this country for a century and a half.
> while establishing slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation
No argument against your point, but a similar[0] Constitutional issue persists today:
Residents of Wyoming are established as 3.23 people for Congressional representation.
Residents of California are about 4/5ths of a person.
[0] Nothing is similar to slavery, and specifically here the fact that the voting power of these 3/5ths allocations was given to people who did not represent the interests of the humans that comprised the allocations in the first place!
> > while establishing slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation
> No argument against your point, but a similar Constitutional issue persists today:
Yes, a very similar issue does exist, but the one you are pointing to is not similar.
> Residents of Wyoming are established as 3.23 people for Congressional representation.
The unequal weighting of population for representation in (in descending order of distortion) the Senate, Electoral College, and House as a whole is not really similar to the awarding of extra weight to those who are permitted by the State to vote specifically for people denied liberty as was done in the 3/5 compromise.
The fact that those disenfranchised by felony disqualification are counted—and as whole persons, not 3/5—especially given the way targeted criminalization and penal servitude directly replaced chattel slavery, is, OTOH, a very similar issue.
I believe you're expanding on my footnote, and I agree.
In addition to felons (permanently disenfranchised in most states), you have temporarily-disenfranchised prisoners, and prison-based population distortions that favor some districts over others.
You could probably make an even greater comparison between the voting powers of:
- a Californian living in a district with high noncitizen population
- a Wyomingian living in a district with a large penitentiary
And legal systems of any nation are more than just the constitution.
So the idea that you can just read one clause in the constitution and therefore clearly know what is allowed and isn't (also, even the interpretation of that clause is not as easy as you are portraying here) is absolutely false.